Cicero: Wolfie's, pickled green tomatoes and memories

Tuesday

Jan 31, 2012 at 10:02 PM

During the late ’80s, you published a recipe for a dish called either Alexander’s, or Alberto’s, 51 Chicken. It came from the hotel or condo at 51st and Collins. At the time it was the headquarters for the “Miami Vice” production staff. The dish was chicken breaded and stuffed with blue cheese and spinach. The piece de resistance was a blueberry topping. I know the combinations sound strange, but every time I served it for special guests, it was a hit! I lost the recipe about 10 years ago and was wondering if you could help me?

I vividly remember both those heady days of “Miami Vice” filming in town, and my astonishment at the strange ingredients in this dish that somehow worked. There was no blue cheese or spinach, but the topping of blueberries, applesauce and sour cream gave me pause, until I actually tried it. Alberto’s 51 was in the Seacoast Towers. We snagged the recipe in May 1986.

ALBERTO’S 51 CHICKEN

4 boneless, skinless chicken breasts

1 pint half-and-half

2 eggs, beaten

1 tablespoon vegetable oil

1 tablespoon unsalted butter

Breading mix:

2 cups seasoned Progresso breadcrumbs

2 tablespoons fresh parsley, chopped

2 tablespoons fresh basil, chopped

1 teaspoon freshly ground pepper

11⁄2 teaspoons garlic powder

4 ounces Parmesan cheese, grated

Topping:

1 pint sour cream

11⁄2 cups fresh blueberries or 1 (12-ounce) can

1 cup applesauce

Trim and lightly pound the chicken breasts. Mix together half-and-half and eggs and let chicken marinate 10 minutes. Mix together breading ingredients. Remove chicken from egg mixture and coat well with breading mixture. Set aside.

In a skillet, heat vegetable oil with butter over medium-high heat until very hot. Place chicken cutlets in pan and sauté until golden brown, turning several times. Pierce with a fork to be sure they are cooked through. Remove from pan and serve with sauce made by combining blueberries and applesauce. Top with dollops of sour cream. Serves 4.

Note: You may want to cut the egg mixture and breading mix ingredients in half, or double the number of chicken breasts. If you follow the recipe as provided by the restaurant you’ll have an over-abundance of the two.

My husband and I were just reading in The Miami Herald about the passing of Wolfie’s owner, Samuel Kaye. The article mentioned the pickled green tomatoes they used to have sitting on the tables ... what a rush of memories! Might you have their recipe in your files somewhere?

I wish I had every recipe from the great old delis of Miami Beach — Wolfie’s, The Rascal House, Pumpernik’s, Samy’s, Corky’s. ... I can still smell that great rush of garlic and brisket as you walked in the door. And those wonderful bowls of pickles — cucumbers and tomatoes and cole slaw — that you munched while waiting for your food. For me it was nearly always a corned beef on rye with Russian dressing.

Alas, the deli’s were replaced by yuppie kingdoms, and we snagged very few recipes before the demise. Happily, though, we have a pickled green tomato recipe and a kosher-style pickle recipe that taste like those garlicky treats at Wolfie’s and all the other gone-but-never-forgotten old school delis. The recipe dates to 1983 and is from the late Harry Kramer, who was 70 at the time and charmingly cantankerous. I once printed a long and tedious recipe from a proper canning book for making pickles. He took umbrage at my “typical, cumbersome, unnecessarily item-jammed recipe” and shared his simple but delicious 1 jar at a time approach.

“My recipe, evolved after much experimentation, duplicates and even surpasses the intangible, delightfully garlicky New York East side pickle-stand flavor. ... There is only one major difference between my pickles and restaurant pickles. The tomatoes to be pickled must be cut into sections for the pickling to be as great as I claim. But who really cares? The end result is probably the best you’ve ever eaten.” Harry was never modest!

Lucy Cooper, who was a longtime Herald food writer and restaurant reviewer, developed the cole slaw recipe here in response to a reader request in 1983, when the Rascal House wouldn’t share its secret.

HARRY KRAMER’S KOSHER-STYLE DILL PICKLES

Take a clean jar, from a quart size to a gallon size. Wash 6 to 13 small Kirby cucumbers, depending on the size of the jar. Put 1 heavy teaspoonful of commercial pickling spices into the jar. Add 6 to 8 garlic cloves, unpeeled, which you’ve sliced in a few places, without cutting all the way through the clove. Pack the cucumbers into the jar whole. If you like, put in a bit of fresh dill weed. If you like a “perked up” flavor, add 4 to 6 dried red chili peppers. Add 3 to 4 ounces of white vinegar. Fill a measuring cup with tap water hot enough to dissolve salt. To each cup of water add 1 teaspoon of salt and stir to thoroughly dissolve. Pour the water into the jar, cupful by cupful, until the jar is full. Cover and leave on the kitchen counter for two days. They are now ready to eat. Keep refrigerated. The pickles will stay good for months.

Notes: The pickles were not analyzed since the amount of sodium absorbed during preparation cannot be determined.

HARRY KRAMER’S PICKLED GREEN TOMATOES

Take any size jar, 32 ounces or larger, and line the bottom with celery cuttings — leaves or stalks or both. Add 6 to 8 peeled and pierced garlic cloves. Pack cleaned and sectioned green tomatoes into the jar (you’ll need about 3 small to medium green tomatoes with no red showing on the skin). Add 3 to 4 ounces of white vinegar. Now fill the jar with 1 cup of hot tap water mixed with 1 teaspoon of salt. Keep adding the salted water until the tomatoes are completely covered. Cover the jar and let sit out for 2 days. Refrigerate. Keeps months in refrigerator. Makes about 12 servings of 1⁄4 tomato each.

Notes: The pickles were not analyzed since the amount of sodium absorbed during preparation cannot be determined.

OLD MIAMI BEACH DELI-STYLE COLESLAW

1 medium (about 1 pound) cabbage

1 green bell pepper

1 medium onion

1⁄4 cup vegetable oil

1⁄4 cup vinegar

1⁄4 cup sugar

Salt and pepper to taste

Shred the cabbage very fine; you should have about 4 cups. Slice onion and bell pepper into very thin slices. Combine oil, vinegar and sugar in a lidded jar; shake well to mix. Pour over the slaw mixture and toss to blend. Makes 8 (1⁄2 cup) servings.

Back in the ’60s and ’70s, I made a cookie that I think was called a “chocolate pillow” or something like that. It consisted of a cookie dough that you piped down onto a cookie sheet with a cookie press into ribbon rows. On top of the dough you put a square of Hershey bar down the length of the ribbon and then covered that with another ribbon of dough. That’s it. Simple and to the point. But I lost the recipe. I tried making a Spritz dough, but that was too thin and delicate for this cookie. It worked, just barely, but just wasn’t right. Somehow the dough I’m thinking about was a cross between a Spritz and a shortbread. Does anyone have help they can give with this dilemma? Thanks.

— Tanya Thompson, Avon Lake, Ohio

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